Editing a Thesis Abstract Without Overcorrecting
The following paragraph is the draft abstract of a master's thesis. It has not been edited.
'Data was collected from 120 master's students over two semesters. Each participant was asked to review three peers' drafts, and then they revised their own text. The results suggest that students who received specific comments improved more than general comments. Because participation was voluntary, it cannot be concluded that feedback caused the improvement. The study's findings have implications for instructors who design online courses, however the sample was drawn from a single university.'
The author wants the abstract to be acceptable in formal academic English without changing the study's meaning. A supervisor flags that not every disputed usage is an error: some choices depend on register and on the style guide adopted by the program.
1. Identify two sentence-level problems that a careful editor would flag regardless of style guide, and revise each one.
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Two clear problems are the faulty comparison and the comma splice.
Faulty comparison: 'students who received specific comments improved more than general comments' compares students with comments. A comparison must compare like with like. Revision: 'students who received specific comments improved more than students who received general comments' or '...improved more than did students who received general comments.'
Comma splice: 'The study's findings have implications for instructors who design online courses, however the sample was drawn from a single university.' Two independent clauses are joined by only a comma. Revision: 'The study's findings have implications for instructors who design online courses; however, the sample was drawn from a single university.' A period before 'however' would also work.
A third possible issue is the pronoun 'they' in 'each participant ... they revised,' but singular 'they' is widely accepted and is not the same kind of error as the two above.
2. Is 'Data was collected' an error in this register? Explain your judgement rather than simply labeling it right or wrong.
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In formal academic English, 'data' is traditionally treated as the plural of 'datum,' so 'Data were collected' is the safer choice in this register. Many style guides and journals still prefer the plural, and the abstract is a formal academic text.
However, singular 'data' with 'was' is increasingly accepted, especially in everyday and some scientific writing, and some style guides permit it. So the best judgement is not that 'Data was' is ungrammatical in all English, but that it is a register and style-guide issue. For this thesis abstract, I would revise to 'Data were collected from 120 master's students' to match formal academic usage. If the program's style guide explicitly adopts singular 'data,' the original could be retained, but the writer should apply that choice consistently.
3. Rewrite the final sentence so that the punctuation is correct and the limitation is clear without changing the meaning.
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Original: 'The study's findings have implications for instructors who design online courses, however the sample was drawn from a single university.'
Revised: 'The study's findings have implications for instructors who design online courses; however, because the sample was drawn from a single university, the findings should be generalized with caution.'
The semicolon fixes the comma splice. Adding 'because' and 'should be generalized with caution' makes explicit what the original only implies: the single-university sample limits generalizability. The revision does not overstate the limitation; it does not claim the findings are invalid, only that generalization requires care.